Huefner wins second luge gold

Germany's Tatjana Huefner claimed gold in the women's singles on Tuesday as the German team threaten to sweep all three luge titles at the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Huefner posted the fastest time of two minutes and 46.524 seconds over the four runs while Austria's Nina Reithmayer claimed second at 0.490 seconds behind with Germany's Natalie Geisenberger third, 0.577 seconds off the pace.

With the body of Nodar Kumaritashvili flown home to Georgia on Monday (local time), the mood was still sombre for Tuesday's women's runs at the Whistler Sliding Centre, where the Georgian died in a training run accident last week.

After 20-year-old Felix Loch dominated the field to claim the men's singles title on Sunday, Huefner claimed victory in the women's with a flawless fourth run and only the doubles title remains to be decided.

Having held an overnight lead of 0.05 seconds over the field, Huefner turned the screw on Tuesday's third run with an almost perfect slide to open a 0.268-second gap.

The margin between the German and Reithmayer in second looked decisive and so it proved as the German clocked a top speed of 134.1 kilometres per hour on the last run to take gold.

Germany's women have dominated the luge in recent Winter Games.

Reithmayer has the distinction of being the only non-German to claim an Olympic medal in the women's singles luge this century after Germans took gold, silver and bronze at both Salt Lake City in 2002 and Turin four years ago.

Since the country reunified in 1990, Germany has won the men's, women's and doubles titles at Nagano in 1998 and at Calgary in 1988.

In the doubles, Austria's Linger brothers, Andreas and Wolfgang, are the defending Olympic champions from Turin and will be challenged by Germany's Andre Florschuetz and Torsten Wustlich, who won silver in Turin.